Update: Follow-up On Local News

Update

May 18, 1992

BARBECUED

If you're eating breakfast right now, you may want to stop reading. And don't look down at your plate. That hunk of ham may be Barbecue the pet pig.

The lovable hog from York County was shipped off to slaughter last week when arrangements for his new home didn't work out. Bob Kennebeck, Barbecue's owner, had made an impassioned plea for someone to adopt the 750-pound porker.

Kennebeck and his family had to leave their Lightfoot Road home to make room for some road construction. They found a smaller place, but it wouldn't accept pigs. So Kennebeck offered Barbecue, who he'd had "since he was a puppy," free to any caring home.

A friend with a farm took Kennebeck up on the offer, but that's when things went awry. Once separated from his owner, the sweet-hearted swine became unruly, "even vicious," Kennebeck said. "He couldn't deal with not being around me," Kennebeck said last week. "I didn't realize how much of a bond we had between us. There really wasn't anything else we could do though, so we sent him to market."

Kennebeck, however, is trying to take a philosophical approach. "After all, pigs are food," he said. "That's life I guess."

By Jim Stratton

CRASH COURSE

Doug Riddell, the Amtrak engineer whose tale of a killing a motorist three years ago near Raleigh appeared in the Daily Press May 1, was involved in a collision with a car at a Maryland railroad crossing just two days later.

Riddell says that on May 3, his passenger train hit a Cadillac driven by an elderly man who apparently ignored bells, gates and lights to cross the track. The driver was injured, and his car was totaled, but nobody on the train was hurt.

Riddell had been especially concerned about railroad safety after learning that Amtrak's Colonial, which he used to drive, smacked into a dump truck at a Newport News crossing April 29, killing the truck's driver. The next day he told his own story of the fatal crash near Raleigh in hopes of warning motorists to heed warnings at crossings and not try to beat the train. After his Maryland accident this month, Riddell wrote in a letter to the newspaper: ``Short of putting an armed guard at railroad crossings, if people don't pay attention they are going to get hurt or killed.''

By Mark Davidson

FAVORS REPAID

He has to take 20 pills a day and dialysis treatments three times a week, and he tires easily. But former Hampton police officer Brent Musgrove no longer requires someone else's blood.

Last fall, Musgrove's immune system began attacking his kidneys, contaminating his blood and requiring it to be replaced repeatedly. His friends and co-workers responded in December by giving 420 pints - the largest special donation on the Peninsula in at least two years. ``Blood is like water. You don't appreciate it until there is a problem,'' said Musgrove of his experience in coping with Goodpasture's disease, a rare blood disorder. So he readily responded when the Red Cross' asked for his help in publicizing a Memorial Day weekend blood drive.

With so many people on vacation, blood donations fall perilously during the summer, says Candy Carey, Hampton Roads Red Cross manager. She says a big turnout is needed from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. this Sunday at Hampton Holiday Inn on Mercury Boulevard.

Musgrove needs a kidney transplant - his own function at 2 percent of their normal capacity - but to be eligible, Musgrove's blood must stay free from disease from now until December. "I'll be 49 in December," he says. "I'm hoping my birthday present is going to be a new kidney."